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Monday Evening: Linked and Loaded

How do we fix this, besides sitting back and waiting for the economy to grow again? The Project has a big new idea: Pay laid-off workers to learn new skills. It’s a bit like unemployment insurance, which hands money to the jobless provided that they look for work, but for retraining.

In recent months, most of Rand Paul’s political odd-couple pairings have underscored the Kentucky senator’s Republican credentials. Paul joined with John McCain to introduce a GOP jobs bill. He teamed up with Lindsey Graham on legislation that would prioritize smaller harbors for dredging work. He worked with his fellow Kentuckian, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, on repealing net neutrality.
When Paul arrived in Washington, it was widely assumed he would spend some of his time fighting these men as well. Last week, that time finally came. On a series of votes involving foreign policy and civil liberties, one of the Senate’s most rock-ribbed Republicans channeled John F. Kennedy: “Sometimes party loyalty asks too much.”

Everyone in Boston of a certain age knows the story of Rosie Ruiz, the marathoner who crossed the Boston finish line in 1980 at 2:31.56, flabby thighs and all, having barely broken a sweat. Despite mounting skepticism, she basked in the glory of having run the third-fastest female marathon in history – for a few days, that is, until a couple of students remembered seeing her jump out of the crowd half a mile from the finish.

Something of the sort has been going on recently with the shade of Friedrich von Hayek. The Austrian economist, who died in 1992 just short of what would have been his ninety-third birthday, never made false claims for himself – far from it: he knew all too well the loneliness of the long distance runner. And scrupulous work as editor by the late W.W. Bartley, interpreter Bruce Caldwell, and biographer Alan Ebenstein, have made it possible to see the man clear.